Former pharmaceutical executive Martin Shkreli has been released from prison early and will serve the rest of his sentence at a halfway house.
In case you forget, Shkreli was the infamous CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals, later called Vyera. In 2015, he obtained exclusive rights to Daraprim and jacked the price from $13.50 to $750 per pill. The lifesaving drug is used to treat a rare parasitic disease that affects pregnant women, cancer patients, and AIDS patients. The price gouging sparked outrage from medical professionals and even opposing presidential candidates during the 2016 campaign. Both Hillary Clinton and future President Donald Trump agreed that his decision was morally wrong.
Shkreli resigned as Turing’s CEO in 2015 after being arrested for defrauding investors by lying about the financial performance of his two failed hedge funds, MSMB Capital Management and MSMB Healthcare. He was found guilty of two counts of securities fraud. Shkreli was also charged with and convicted of securities fraud for manipulating stock shares of Retrophin, a pharmaceutical firm he founded. Shkreli was sentenced to seven years in federal prison and banned from working in the drug industry again.
On Wednesday, Martin Shkreli shared a photo of himself on Facebook with the caption, “Getting out of real prison is easier than getting out of Twitter prison.”
His attorney, Benjamin Brafman, confirmed that Shkreli completed several programs behind bars that allowed him an early release.
The pharmaceutical CEO was also well known for rubbing elbows with some of the biggest rappers. He even leaked an unreleased Lil Wayne and Kendrick Lamar track from “The Carter V” in 2017 as the album was experiencing delays. He was also embroiled in a beef with Wu-Tang Clan for secretly purchasing their private album “Once Upon a Time in Shaolin” for $2 million.
